The present invention relates to data acquisition, more particularly to methods and devices for acquiring data from sensors characterized by unfavorable placement such as in terms of accessibility or associability of apparatus.
Many applications require the placement of sensors in locations that are remote or hard-to-reach or not conducive to the association of instrumentation. The acquisition of sensor data in such applications can be difficult or impractical.
The U.S. Navy, for instance, conducts testing of both model-scale and full-scale marine vessels, such as involving acoustic evaluation. Some locations on the marine vessel (e.g., sail, control surfaces, certain areas of the hull) do not readily lend themselves to external situation of sensors and other instrumentation. External hull placement of sensors can be undesirable due to mechanical unfeasibility of sensor mounting (e.g., absence of proximate hull penetrators for facilitating sensor mounting) or adverse hydrodynamic ramifications (e.g., flow disturbance) of sensor mounting. Further, some naval vessels require sensor arrays to operate during navigation to monitor acoustic performance (e.g., to detect and record problems such as structure-born noise). The installation of sensor capability in the vicinity of a noise source would obviate extraordinary sensing measures involving equipment conveyance to the suspected location of noise generation.